“Thank you.” Less capable of silken politesse, her voice was quietly earnest.
“You’re entirely welcome,” he replied, polished and suave. He glanced at the stable lad holding out Zelda’s fur coat. “Send it up to the house.” Then his gaze swung back to Zelda and he dipped his head. “Shall we?”
As they walked away, Zelda said, half under her breath, “I didn’t want to leave you. I’m sorry. How tiring this must be for you.”
“Not in the least. We should be safe enough in the kitchen,” he mildly said, preferring less unnerving earnestness. He was already in deeper than he’d like, racked with indecision, struggling against a disturbingly violent lust.
“I envy you your calm. I’m impulsive by nature and also not as practiced as you.” She smiled. “Perhaps I can learn.”
“No, don’t learn,” he muttered, chafing memory prompting his tone. “Practiced women I know by the score.”
“And you’re looking for something different.”
“I’m not looking for anything.” The naked, unsimple truth.
“But I just fell into your lap.”
“Not yet.” His instant smile was a triumph of audacity over good judgment. “But I’m hopeful. So screw it all,” he added apropos nothing and everything. Then he reached out and took Zelda’s hand because he couldn’t stop himself, because his craving for her wasn’t completely sexual, because he felt an incomprehensible joy. “Seventy hours to go.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Can we do it?”
“We have to,” she said like she did in her frank way. “It won’t be forever.”
“It’ll just seem like forever,” he gruffly said. “But since
have to
isn’t in my vocabulary, I’d recommend you lock your door tonight.”
“Consider me warned.”
“Do you play cards? Chris is learning.”
He was deliberately changing the subject. “Of course,” she said with equal tact, glad in a way to be distracted from her outrageous feelings. “What else is there to do on cold winter nights with five bored children? They didn’t like to read, not even Francesca.”
“Your sister who’s married?”
She nodded. “She was young but insistent, and it was either that or Papa having to go over to the Elliots next door with a shotgun. Not that Ian was against marriage. Everyone just thought they were too young.”
“How young is young?”
“Seventeen.”
His brows rose into his hairline. “I wish them luck.”
“And good health. She’s having a baby next spring.”
“Was the marriage in time?”
“Absolutely. They’ve been married almost a year.”
“What do you do now that everyone’s gone?” He was surprised at his question. He didn’t, as a rule, inquire into the lives of the women he bedded other than to ask them their preferences in jewelry.
“I’ve been traveling the past year. I just returned from Brazil. Before that I was in Constantinople, Venice; Florence is lovely in the spring.”
“Do you travel alone or with a companion?”
“Generally alone, sometimes with a maid, but I dislike having to accommodate someone else.”
He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath. With a woman of her splendor, he’d anticipated a male companion. Although the elation he felt was disturbing. “Chris likes to win at cards. Just a warning,” he said, deliberately altering the direction of his thoughts.
“Don’t all children?”
“I suppose they do.”
“Didn’t you?”
Winning wasn’t an issue in his childhood so much as surviving. His father’s drinking and explosive temper had been a constant danger. “I don’t remember,” he said, not about to discuss his troubled childhood. “And you?”
She grinned. “Need you ask. I
love
to win.”
He laughed. “Silly question.”
“I’ll be winning on Monday, too,” she said, knowing her heart was in her eyes and not caring.
“We’ll both win, darling,” he smoothly replied, refusing to acknowledge her look or the pleasure it gave him. He reminded himself that this was just a country house flirtation—soon over and no different from all the rest. “Here we are,” he went on in the same insouciant tone, having escorted her through the kitchen garden to the kitchen door. “Now Chris can be demanding. Let me know when you get tired of playing cards.”
They found Chris with Mrs. Creighton and John at a table in a corner of the huge kitchen, busily playing cards. Chris looked up. “Papa! Look how much I won!” He pointed to a small pile of coins.
“You’re getting much too good,” Alec said, affectionately ruffling the boy’s flaxen curls. “Soon I won’t be able to win against you.”
“You already can’t!” the little boy said with a broad smile.
Alec winked. “Maybe I’ve gotten better.” Turning to the nanny and groom, the earl politely said, “Thank you, you’ve done your duty. We’ll take over now.” Sliding his arm around Zelda’s waist, he drew her close. “Mrs. Creighton, John, allow me to introduce Miss Griselda MacKenzie. She and her fleet roan just beat Zeus and me in a race. She’s a magnificent rider.”
The retainers both paid their respects, although afterward Creiggy regarded Zelda with a fixed gaze. Alec had never introduced one of his paramours to her. “I see you have the MacKenzie hair.” A tall, grey-haired Scots woman, stern of countenance and slightly forbidding, Mrs. Creighton met Zelda eye to eye. “That distinctive color breeds true, doesn’t it?”
Zelda expected Lady Dalgliesh had trouble with Chris’s nanny. She wasn’t the retiring type. It helped to have Alec’s arm around her waist in the way of security. “You must be familiar with the Highlands,” Zelda said.
“I have a second cousin who married a MacKenzie. I’ve been up that way on occasion. Alec came there with me once.” Creiggy shot him a look. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I do. I was eight, not two. I remember perfectly.” He grinned. “You fell into the pond.”
“I believe you pushed me,” Creiggy said with a sudden warm twinkle in her eye. Her bright-eyed gaze swung to Zelda. “Now, don’t take any guff from the impudent lad, Miss MacKenzie.”
“I won’t.”
“He likes to have his way too much.”
“I’ve noticed,” Zelda said with a small smile.
Alec rolled his eyes. “Do you mind, Creiggy?”
“I expect you to behave, that’s all.” His old nanny’s gaze slid down to his hand gently stroking Zelda’s hip.
“I always do,” he blandly said, not moving his hand.
“Don’t forget I can still rap your knuckles.”
“You’d have to catch me first,” Alec drawled. “And I don’t believe that’s happened since—”
“Humph, impertinent scamp. Now you enjoy yourself, Master Christopher,” the nanny said, turning to her current charge. “Your Papa will send for me when you’re ready to go back to the nursery.”
“I’m too old for the nursery.
Papa,
” Chris vehemently exhorted, “there’s babies up there!”
“And also some children your age, Master Christopher, don’t forget,” Mrs. Creighton said in a soothing tone. “In fact, Billy Cannadine was asking for you this morning.”
Chris’s gaze swung up to his father. “Billy has his own knife! He let me hold it! May I have a big knife like that—pleeease ?”
Alec glanced at the nanny with raised brows.
“I was there,” she succinctly said.
“Perhaps someday you may have a big knife,” Alec kindly noted. “Now how about another game of cards?”
As the trio in the kitchen began their play, Mrs. Creighton and John walked through the kitchen door and out into the downstairs corridor. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mrs. Creighton murmured. “Did he speak to you about Miss MacKenzie?”
“Not a word.” John had been Alec’s groom since he was young. He and Creiggy had followed the countess and Alec when they’d escaped the main house years ago and went to live in the Dower House. They knew all there was to know about the family, and their loyalty to the earl was complete. “She’s a first-rate horsewoman though. Maybe that’s her appeal.”
“A whole lot more than that, I’d say. Although, did you see how she was dressed? Mannish—not his usual style.”
“A beauty though. That’s his style.” A small, slim man, he had to look up slightly to Mrs. Creighton’s greater height.
“Still—it’s very strange. He’s never introduced one of his lady loves to us. I don’t know if I should wish him well or wonder what kind of scheming woman she might be?”
“It makes no never mind what she is. He looks happy and he could use a bit o’ happiness.”
“What about his wife?” Creiggy muttered. “
She
doesn’t want him happy.”
“Herself has her eye on Mytton. She might not even notice. And his lordship don’t care anyways what she thinks.”
Mrs. Creighton gave the ex-jockey a narrow-eyed look. “If Violetta’s in a pet though, she’ll take it out on Chris.”
“Then tell his lordship. He won’t abide it.”
“The old villainous earl has much to answer for,” Creiggy muttered.
“And his son’s payin’ the price every day, more’s the pity,” John said with a frown. “If’n the countess rode, I’d see that her saddle cinch was cut a wee notch. With luck, the bitch would break her neck and be off in hell with the old earl.”
“A matched pair of walking evil, those two,” Creiggy snapped.
“His lordships seems right happy now. Maybe it’s a sign o’ better times.”
“Pray God,” Alec’s old nanny said with a sigh.
M
EANWHILE, CHRIS WAS delighted with his new playmates. He adored his father, and a warm friendship was instantly established between Zelda and Chris when she asked him whether his pony was fast. His eyes lit up and he proceeded to explain in great detail how very fast Petunia could gallop and how just as soon as he could teach his pony to jump, his Papa would buy him his
very own
stallion.
Then Zelda showed him how to play a new card game for money, he kept winning and winning, and life couldn’t have been any better for an exuberant little six-year-old.
In the course of their play, after Chris’s winnings had piled up markedly, the cook took apple pies from the oven and brought them all a serving. They ate pie with Chantilly cream along with a sarsaparilla drink from the still room while Chris talked like a magpie between bites: about his favorite book about guns, his bestest friend, Thad, who could run faster than anyone, about his Papa’s big desk that he could sit at in his own chair, and any number of subjects that Zelda responded to with interest, diplomacy, and the occasional informative commentary that inevitably brought a wide-eyed look to the young boy’s eyes and the exclamation, “How do you know that when you’re a girl?”
“I have four brothers,” she’d answered the first time and in variations on the theme the other times he’d been astonished at her knowledge of manly things.
Having finished eating first, Alec lounged in his chair and contemplated the homey scene before him with warm satisfaction. The rapport between his son and Zelda was gratifying to see. Chris was happy as a clam, talking animatedly, his cheeks flushed with excitement, and Zelda was marvelous with the boy, engaging him in the intricacies of a new children’s card game—apparently one of several in her repertoire. She was patient in her instructions, quick to praise when Chris grasped a new concept, and openly affectionate—touching his arm or hand, ruffling his curls when he made her laugh.
Yet she never overstepped the casual role of friend, nor asked him prying questions. Alec found that particularly appealing. So many ladies he knew wanted to insinuate themselves into his life; they would have used the boy to cultivate a closer intimacy with him.
“There now,” Zelda said, her explanation complete. “Try counting what you have in your hand and I’ll finish my pie. Remember, the ace is worth twice as much as all the rest—here, start with these on the end.” With a quick smile for Chris, she turned to her dessert.
And an even more satisfying scene ensued.
One of a highly libidinous nature.
The earl watched with rapt attention as Zelda began to eat her dessert, the simple act taking on a decidedly erotic cast. Or perhaps whatever Miss MacKenzie did was sexually arousing for him—her mere presence putting a strain on his self-control. But the sight of each spoonful of syrupy pie with Chantilly cream sliding into her mouth served as a kind of delectable foreplay. Was it unconscious or deliberate? Was she playing to an audience of one? Or was Miss MacKenzie unaware of the picture she presented?
Not that it mattered; the result was the same.
Shifting slightly in his chair to accommodate his rising erection, Alec briefly debated carrying her away on some flimsy pretext. Or no pretext. And if Chris hadn’t been inches away, he would have.
As it was, he was reduced to a frustrating voyeurism and a burgeoning horniness—each ensuing transfer of the confection from plate to mouth further ratcheting up his lust. His gaze was riveted on the languid sweep of the spoon, on Zelda’s every movement, each subsequent bite ingested adding dimension to his cock. Her obvious enjoyment of the sweet pastry was a lewd tour de force: The way she slowly opened her full lips as the spoon approached, the charming way the tip of her pink tongue would suddenly appear to delicately lap up the lush concoction, the manner in which she chewed, savoring the flavors, relishing the taste, and the way she swallowed particularly engaged his interest.
The titillating display suggested a more salacious activity to a man of Dalgliesh’s libertine propensities; he could almost feel her mouth on his hard prick. Fortunately, the table hid the huge bulge in his buckskins from public view, although the fierce, insistent ache in his cock was destroying his concentration.
Jesus, how the hell was he going to last until Monday?
Opportunely or perhaps inopportunely, Zelda looked up and smiled. “Isn’t the pie wonderful?”
“Among other things,” he murmured, his voice tight with constraint, the lascivious image on the other side of the table provocative as hell. “You have a dab of cream on your bottom lip.”